South Africa Declarations of Defiance

An activist and a union leader speak out

More than 40,000 people packed the soccer stadium in Mamelodi, a black township outside Pretoria, to attend a funeral rally for twelve blacks killed during a clash with police three weeks ago. Diplomats from the U.S. and ten other Western countries were among those who had come to pay their respects to the dead, including a two-month-old baby who suffocated from tear-gas fumes. While police looked on from a hill above the stadium, the mourners sang freedom songs, waved the black, green and gold flag of the outlawed African National Congress and cheered speeches by both white and black antiapartheid activists.